I’m finally getting it! After days, weeks even, of having new and exciting snippets of God’s truth seep into my dull brain, I’m finally seeing a clearer picture.
I need to begin way back when I was a child growing up. All of my life I’d had the security of my parents’ love and the knowledge that they would do everything in their power to protect me. Even at school I had the discipline and boundaries of routine. But around the age of 16 this suddenly began to change. I learnt to drive, left home and went to study in the city. I needed to make choices and take responsibility. I was trusted to go out unsupervised. Whether I passed or failed my studies depended on me. The walls that were set up to protect me were tumbling down. I was out in that big wide world!
I think that has often been the story of my journey with God. I was secure in my child-like faith but over the years things began to happen that I wasn’t prepared for. Life wasn’t quite as predictable as I once thought. It was full of things I’d not planned for and things I definitely didn’t want; nasty surprises leaving me with a dread of what might happen next…feeling a little lost; even asking questions I never imagined asking; doubting things I’d always accepted.
However, little by little, our gracious and faithful God has been showing me that He’s so much bigger than any thing that could possibly come along and, as I began to understand that, although disappointments kept rolling in, I was strangely at peace. My peace was greater than it had been for a long time. I was having trouble trying to explain it.
Recently I’ve been reading through Exodus and thinking about the pillar of cloud and fire that God provided for his people and on Sunday morning when we were singing ‘The God of Angel Armies’ I got it!
My peace came from the realisation that I was contained within the walls of God’s sovereign love and grace. Nothing could happen outside his sovereign purpose!
I’d come full circle. Whereas in my early years I’d lived within the safety of those childhood walls, far greater was the realisation that for ever and eternity I could know with that same child-like faith that I could live at peace contained within the walls of my Sovereign God!
“Encircled by God all day long” Deuteronomy 33 v 12 (The Message)